


The Birds in Bloomsbury

by Jay Tryfanstone (tryfanstone)



Category: The Ice Ghosts Mystery - Jane Louise Curry
Genre: 1970s, Bloomsbury, Gen, London, The Exchange at Fic Corner 2018, pinch hit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-29 04:30:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15722007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryfanstone/pseuds/Jay%20Tryfanstone
Summary: Wreaking cheerful familial havoc on some unsuspecting foreign metropolis: the Birds in London.





	The Birds in Bloomsbury

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gray Cardinal (Gray_Cardinal)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gray_Cardinal/gifts).



"Gone north, back soon. Look out for the birds," Mrs. Molly Bird read aloud, frowning over the note left pinned to their newly borrowed kitchen table with its unfamiliar scars and stains. "Well. Your father has his reasons, of course, but one might have hoped for a little less brevity."

"There are nine whole syllables," offered twelve year old Mab Bird, only recently able to look over her mother's shoulder and taking full advantage. "That's five more than when he went to Cuzco."

"Kidnapping doesn't count," said Perry, looming in the narrow doorway. He had gained six inches in the last six months, and owing, his sisters thought, to an immense capacity for sustenance of every variety, had matched his upwards surge with sideways bulk. Generally a cheerful soul, Perry had found the process disconcerting, regularly knocking his shins on side-tables and his elbows off jutting bookshelves, the latter a hazard found in profusion throughout the Birds' usual home in Pasadena, California. "Mab, old girl, what in holy hell did you pack in this suitcase? Lead specimens?"

"Not on the kitchen table," muttered Mrs. Bird automatically, still staring at the note from her husband, an eminent seismologist, who like most earth scientists possessed an affinity for mud, mountains, and the kind of phlegm more commonly associated with the Mustachioed Explorer native to Victorian novels or Marvelous comic strips. 

"It's Dickens!" Mab said. 

"Certainly not," said Mrs. Bird. " _He_ was paid by the word."

"And boy, don't I know it," said Perry. He sighed, and hefted Mab's suitcase, sagging at the bottom, battered at the edges, and covered in stickers. Brussels and Salzburg were still reasonably legible, but under them the faded colors of of South American, Canadian, and European cities attested to well-traveled baggage. "Anyone would think there were no bookshops in London."

"I might have needed them on the plane," said Mab, very reasonably. "Besides, you brought your guitar!"

"How else should I practice?" Perry enquired reasonably, maneuvering himself and the suitcases to head up the townhouse staircase, all eight flights of it, narrow as a chimney and twice as angular. His elbows thudded off the plaster with every step, the suitcases thumped against the risers; the stairs creaked, squeaked, and moaned...

"Oh, _mother_ ," said Oriole, sweeping into the kitchen with a packet of Folger's ready-ground coffee and opening every cupboard door in turn. "Did you forget the percolator?"

"I couldn't fit it in the suitcase, dear," Mrs. Bird said. "Besides, I'm sure Dr Agincourt will have one somewhere. Have you seen my guide to Windsor Castle? I'm _sure_ I packed it."

"The one that dated to when you and daddy came over for the coronation?" said Oriole. "Honestly..." 

Mrs. Bird cast a withering look at her eldest child. "Let's see," she said. "The one with the current Lord High Admiral's thank-you note inside? And the menu from the private dinner at Claridges? And the commendation from General Ingalls, who is now head of the board of trustees at the British Museum-" 

"Oh, come on," said Oriole. "Anyone would think you and Daddy worked for the British Secret Service!" 

"Hm," said Mrs Bird. 

Oriole abandoned her search for the accoutrements of coffee-making, Peregrine clattered down all eight flights of stairs, and the chimes on the front door echoed through the narrow, tiled hallway. From the stoop, where the Birds and their baggage had been tenderly deposited by their London taxi-cab driver, Mab's voice echoed, puzzled. "I say, Perry, did you drop the crampons on these milk-bottles? Because the tops are all eaten away." 

"No," breathed Oriole.

Mrs. Bird smiled.

The Bird's temporary home was a tall, thin, red-brick house, five stories high including basement and attic, sporting three rows of elongated sash windows and faintly surprised looking gables. It stood in a row of identical houses, facing onto a little rectangular park with some rather dusty trees and a few rose-beds. The park was enclosed by pointed iron railings, the street-lamps were elegantly Edwardian, and the street itself was cobbled. There was a bright red letter-box on one corner, collections four times a day, a light blue police-box on the opposite, break glass and call for assistance, and a firmly bolted church with a columned portico and a cupola, services Wednesday, Saturday, and three times on Sunday. The rear windows looked out onto a tiny back yard, where two soot-stained plane trees battled with an anemic rhododendron, shadowing the basement kitchen and the study. Molly Bird sent Perry out for an electric light bulb stronger than fifteen watts: Oriole laid claim to the front bedroom with its tall windows and the only full-length mirror in the building, and Mab, looking over the top of the trees and the back of the opposite tenement from the attic, was delighted to discover a view of the monumental skylights of the British Museum, flushed pink and gold by the sunset.

"I mean, it's like having the pyramids in your back garden!" she said. 

Perry raised an eyebrow, pocketing the brass key to their borrowed front door. 

"And the Rosetta stone!" said Mab. "The Parthenon marbles! The Assyrian Lions!" She was starry-eyed. "The mummies!"

"It was very kind of Dr Agincourt to arrange a tour for us," said Mrs. Bird. 

"After hours!" said Mab, unable to resist skipping over a couple of cracks in the pavement, just like Christopher Robin. The street-lights were coming on one by one, golden globes against the rich blue of the summer evening.

"We mustn't be late," said Oriole firmly, checking her watch. "Dr Agincourt was most specific."

"There's plenty of time, dear," said Mrs. Bird, fishing an 1932 copy of _Baedeker's London and Its Environs_ out of her knitted shoulder-bag. "Dryden..." she said. "Oh, darlings, look! That's where the Pankhursts used to live!"

"Probably better not to chain yourself to railings around here, then," said Perry darkly, glancing at the London Bobby on the corner, stiffly smart in his blue uniform and domed helmet. 

"And in 1775..." said Mrs. Bird. 

"Oh, _my_ ," said Mab, as they rounded the corner. 

For a moment, she was the only one of the Birds who could muster words. It was the first time the three Bird children had seen the museum, and even their formidable mother had forgotten just how imposing the massive forecourt and its monumental pillars appeared, flushed gold by the last light of the sun, outlined by the darkest of evening shadows, built to awe and inspire at the same time. The British Museum housed the archaeological spoils of four centuries of imperial conquest and archaeological treasure hunting, its corridors stretched for two and a half miles, and its eight million objects covered two million years of human existence. 

"And we were founded on the principle of open access for all," said Dr Lucy Mostafa firmly, tucking a few stray black hairs back into her bun to little effect. She had discovered them, a little stunned, on the forecourt. "Just like your own Metropolitan, where the Professor was kind enough to arrange for a tour last year for those of us working with stone artifacts. My own specialty, of course, is the worked stone of the Luxor region, the tombs, the sarcophagi...I do hope you don't mind the dead? Some people can be a little sensitive."

"Oh, not at all," said Mrs. Bird firmly.

"Embalmed, of course," said Dr Lucy. "I gather embalming is more common in the United States than over here, and your New Orleans mausoleums are so very intriguing. Built on rafts over the water table! I don't suppose you have any personal experience?" she asked hopefully.

The Birds shook their heads in unison.

"Ah, well," said Dr Lucy sadly, and then, brightening, "But of course, you're here to see the museum. Let me take you inside."

They wound their way between the small London cars, towards the main entrance with its massive columns and weighty portico. The steps to the front door were still busy, as scholars left the reading room, trailing pencils and portfolio cases. A tall woman with a swinging stride and knee-length boots carried a tortoise on a lacquered tray: a pair of children shared liquorice candies from a blue paper, and a lean, lanky figure in the most elegant of green dress uniform detached himself from a pillar and ran down the museum steps towards the Birds...

"I say," breathed Mab, and tugged at Perry's sleeve. "Is that - isn't that-" Our enigmatic stranger, she thought, delighted. 

"I believe it is," said Perry. "Hey. Gabe!"

They had last seen him in Austria, after the end of the seismic affair of the Ice Ghosts. Six months later, Gabriel Lanz, his blue eyes sparkling, his blond curls fashionably long and gleaming in the last of the sunlight, drew himself up in front of Mrs. Bird, snapped his heels and kissed her hand. He grinned at Perry, gave Mab a pleased little bow - "Mab!" - and only then turned to Oriole. 

"Miss Bird," he said. And then, charmingly, flushed. 

"Gabriel," said Oriole, who, to the mutual fascination of her family, contrived to look both helplessly surprised and elegantly composed in a sleight of hand only she could manage. 

"Oriole, if I may," said Gabriel. "It is, eh, I mean, I have faith that..." He ground to a halt.

Mrs. Bird coughed apologetically. "Gabe, my dear, please don't bring her back too late. Darling, you look lovely. Now. Off with the pair of you!"

"But how-" 

"An exchange of evidences, you understand, at Scotland Yard," said Gabriel, who was Something in the Austrian police force which involved on occasion a great deal of gold braid and many ceremonial duties, and more often the kind of cross-Europe intelligence work that left Oriole waiting on letters from Tirol with determined composure. "I contacted the Professor, but was not sure if escapement could performed..." His swift grin indicated that if escape was at all possible, it would indeed be performed. Then it vanished into hesitation. "Is it too much to ask? There is a little restaurant, very elegant, deserving of the woman who saved my life, but..."

"Of course," said Oriole, smiling. 

" _Isch des bärig!_ " Gabriel exclaimed, and then, "If I may?" 

He held out his hand. Oriole, stepping forward, tucked her fingers into his. "My dear," said Gabriel, and kissed them.

"Sap," muttered Perry.

Mab elbowed him, hard. The handsome prince...she thought, although Gabe was really far too practical to be royalty. The handsome woodcutter led the princess to his faithful Mini Cooper roadster...although, really, if Gabe ever saw Orry at the breakfast table he would soon be disabused of any princessly charms before coffee....

"Well," said Dr Lucy, who did not seem at all disconcerted to mislay a quarter of her guests. "Shall we?" 

It was in the attic galleries, usually closed to the public, that Mab became creepingly, miserably sure that they were being watched. The mummified cats had been proud little relics, the stuffed crocodile a fascinating curiosity, the mummies on display in the public galleries awesomely other-worldly, blindly self-contained and not at all likely to come wandering after one, trailing lines of toweling and silently howling... The salt-preserved Iranian skull with its wisps of reddish hair had been merely intriguing, the Anglo-Saxon burial fascinating with its juxtaposition of weapons and jewelry...

' _Something is looking at me_ ,' Mab thought, with horrible certainty. The back of her neck crawled with the thought, spider-legged with horror. She spun around. Dimly lit beyond the reach of Dr Lucy's flashlight, attic was crowded with old display cases and packing trunks, the glinting glass eyes of stuffed animals and the gleam of un-manned armor...had the door to that sarcophagus leaned so far open when they had walked past it? Had that burial stele stood quite to tall, the shadows behind it been so very dark...?

"...research project...Kazakhstan..." said Dr Lucy. "Of course, the Hermitage collections...a few reports, of course, smuggled out... and, _inshallah_ , if one should happen to be in the Caucasus in summer..."

The doctor's voice was fading. Mab tugged her cardigan closer and walked on, swiftly. Her footsteps on the polished floorboards were very nearly silent, but...surely that was the patter of mice? Every museum had mice. It was an axiom, like cats in libraries and...

"Oh!" she squeaked.

"Mab?" whispered Perry. "What is it?"

"I think there's something watching us," said Mab, and looked up. 

"Smaller finds," said Dr Lucy. "Many of these are yet to be catalogued..."

In daylight, the long, paneled sweep of the skylights welcomed daylight into every nook and cranny. At night, they brought the darkness down into the museum, the deepest of blues, starred with the occasional blinking landing light of a Heathrow-bound airplane and the residual illumination of the streetlights: not full dark, but shadowed.

"There's something up there," Mab said. She could see deep black shadows across the skylights, flares of it, great, looming dark wings.

"I think it's just the flashlight," Perry offered.

Nothing moved. "And these are boxes from the 1947 El Amon excavations..." said Dr Lucy, faintly. Mrs. Bird hummed in acknowledgement. "Some really nice turquoise pieces from the Lower Kingdom, showing the influence of the Eritrean smiths in the fine metal beading-" 

There was a rush of wind, as if a winged shadow raced over their heads. Perry ducked. Dr Lucy, terrifyingly, screamed, and into the echo of her voice crashed the shattering crack of breaking glass, sharp as a splintered gunshot. 

"Mom!" Perry shouted. He had Mab by the elbow and was holding her close, protected by the bulk of his body. "Mom, are you okay?"

"I'm fine, dear!" shouted Mrs. Bird. "But I think Lucy's sprained her ankle."

"Ah, it's nothing," said Dr Lucy.

She was already trying to stand when they arrived, concentrating, not on her bruised ankle, but on the broken skylight. "That cabochon was thousand years old!" she said. "Snatched it out of my hand!"

"I say, mom, can I borrow your scarf?" said Perry. "And Dr Mustafa, if you wouldn't mind just sitting on top of the pottery case..."

"What was that?" said Mrs. Bird "An _owl_?"

"Inside the _museum_?" said Mab.

"Oh, that's nothing," said Dr Lucy, still staring at the hole in the skylight. 

From side to side, it was the span of an eagle's wings. A condor's. An embalmed, undead stork's, rank with rot, obsessed with turquoise... 

'Don't be ridiculous,' Mab told herself firmly. 

"We get sparrows in here all the time," Dr Lucy said stoutly. 

It was too late for sparrows in the park, when they walked back to the house, but once they were away from the still busy museum and the main road with its buses and taxis, the night was surprisingly quiet.

"That can't possibly be an owl," said Mrs. Bird incredulously. 

There was a soft " _Twit twoooh!_ " from the trees by the church.

"It'll be kids," said Peregrine, with the certainty of a guitairist who very recently mastered the art of tuning his strings and now considered himself an expert on sound.

" _Twooo!_ " agreed the owl.

"Really, darling?" said Mrs. Bird, and then, "I hope there's a mandolin in that kitchen..."

There was no mandolin in the kitchen, as Mrs. Bird had discovered, cooking cheese omelets for supper, but there was a guitar in the garden. At dawn. Mab, turning over in her cosy bed under the attic window, muttered imprecations and incantations, but even the most forceful of sisterly opinions had failed to deter Peregrine from endless hesitating attempts at _Stairway to Heaven_ and _Bad Moon Rising_. "Too early!" she groaned into her pillow, as strings of notes paraded themselves from the garden in threatening minor keys. Eventually, stung, she pulled on her robe and fled to the kitchen, where a brand-new gleaming drip coffee maker sat on the side and her sister looked remarkably smug, cradling a willow-pattern cup in her hands. 

"Oh, Oriole, can you make Perry _stop_?" 

"Stop what?" said Oriole, raising a plucked eyebrow.

"That _guitar_ " said Mab. "I wish he'd take lessons. I'm so _very_ tired of Stairway to Heaven! And it's-" she checked, "It's seven o'clock in the morning! Much too early to consider life after death!"

"I can't hear anything," said Oriole. "And Piggy was snoring when I came downstairs. Mab, are you sure?"

Mab tilted her head on one side. It was quite true, she could no longer hear the trilling notes of the guitar strings, but the kitchen was in the basement, and the thick walls muffled sound... "I know what I heard," said Mab. 

"It could have been someone else. There are guitair classes, you know, at the Jazz Club on Russell Street," said Oriole. "I saw the poster last night."

"Oh, is _that_ where you went?" said Mab. "How is Gabe? Were there luscious ladies in satin? Did anyone offer you nefarious substances? Were there _criminals_?"

Oriole laughed. "Yes, no, no...I don't think so. Gabe was very sweet, one can hardly imagine...Oh, Mab," Oriole said. "How ridiculous this is! And yet I wasn't even that surprised, you know,when he appeared at the museum. Not like mom and pop, but..." Oriole, who had a plan for every occasion, ran out of words and stared at her coffee. 

"There's a great deal to be said for that young man," said Mrs Bird, sweeping into the kitchen in two trailing cardigans with her hair still in its bristling night-time plaits. She looked like a schoolgirl: Daddy would have laughed, and kissed the tip of her nose. "I gather we owe him the coffee machine?"

"I don't know how he found it," Oriole confessed. "I can't imagine he st- _borrowed_ it. I think that would be beneath his dignity."

"Hm," said Mrs Bird. "Well, enterprise is an excellent quality in any young person." She wandered around the kitchen table, fishing out a basin, a rolling pin, a box of eggs and a packet of bacon, two mugs, an egg cosy, the butter, in a blue wrapper...the matches... "I was thinking we could visit the Tower of London today," she said, and absently cracked one of the eggs into a blue-and-white enamel pie dish. 

Mab, experienced in wrangling her mother's cooking, rescued it. The back of her neck was starting to bristle again, just as it had at the museum, as if someone was watching them... And yet the kitchin was in the basement, almost underground, with only two little, shaded windows. One of them held a vase of sunflowers, with half the seed-heads plucked bare: the other was shaded, altough the shadows flickered across the frosted glass...

"Oh, good, a whisk," Mrs. Bird said, and eyed the stove. "We could be _tourists_...your father and I always planned on The Tower, tea at Claridges', a walk along the Thames..."

Piercingly loud, someone whistled outside the kitchen window. " _Picture you upon my knee, Just tea for two and two for tea..._ " sang Mrs Bird softly, in harmony. "Oh, Mab, thank you, that was exactly what I was looking for. Can you imagine, there's no griddle!"

Mab, having passed her mother a frying pan, tiptoed towards the shadowed window. The whistling did not stop. The shadows darkened, came to a point... "Nobody near us, no friends or relations..." hmmed Mrs Bird, and then her voice was lost in the spatter of bacon hitting the pan. Oriole said, "Mother," and Mab flung open the latch. 

Exposed mid-tweet and open-beaked, a large black bird glared back at her, affronted. The whistling stopped. 

"Oh, _really!_ " said Mab. 

The bird said something very rude indeed.

"Look," said Mab, "It's just too early in the morning!"

"They're excellent mimics, ravens," said Mrs Bird. "Intelligent birds, too. Edgar Allen Poe had one, you know - 'Once upon a midnight dreary...' I'm sure I found some birdseed around here somewhere..."

"Oh, I say," said Peregrine, summoned from his bed by the incantation of bacon sizzle. "Breakfast! Bravo, mama."

"Wash your hands first," said his mama, sternly, recalled to the stove.

The raven cocked its head, affixed the silver teaspoons with an acquisitive eye, and hopped closer. Mab, thoughtfully, closed the window.

After her own breakfast she went in search of birdseed. There was a very large tub of it, in the study, carefully sealed against mice, alongside the box of seedballs and peanuts on string, and above both was the perfect view through wide Victorian sash windows of the back yard with its bird boxes and bird table. There were two pairs of binoculars on the windowsill, and to one side a camera sat on a tripod, lens pointed towards the bird table.

"Oh, _of course_ ," said Mab. She looked around the study, at the Audoban print over the fireplace and the little jade owl by the ink pot, the bookshelves with their _Collins Field Guide to British Birds_ and _Oxford Handbook of Waterfowl_. The ostrich egg in the cabinet, the Ruskin sketch of the peacock's feather by the door... 

Outside the window, the bird-feeders swayed gently as the blue-tits clung to the wire, dandelion-puff acrobats, reaching for the last of the seed. A judiciously posed jackdaw, bright as a black jet button and almost as shiny, fixed Mab with a single, glassy eye. There were six or seven blackbirds under one of the trees, and a little row of neat brown birds with dappled chests sitting on the top of the fence. Dr Agincourt's house, it appeared, was not just welcoming to Birds. 

They refilled the feeders and hung fresh strings of peanuts and bacon rinds, before they left the house, and found their day devoid of mysterious events. The Tower ravens might have been particularly attentive, the Trafalger Square pigeons persistant, and the wheeling, silent sea-gulls a disconcerting shadow, but the birds of both varieties left each other a courteous distance. Even the four magpies keeping watch over the park were politely neutral, keeping their distance as the Birds wandered home.

"Corvids are such clever birds," Mrs. Bird said. "They're old souls, I believe." The tilt of her head held exactly the same degree of self-possession as the elegant black-and-white magpies. "The ravens. The crows, just like our own native tricksters. The jackdaws, of course." One of the magpies coughed, flaring its wings. "And these very handsome gentlemen." She smiled, and nodded to the magpies as if they were well acquainted. 

"And ladies," said Peregrine. 

"Torch singers," said Oriole. 

"I like to think of them as counterfeit policemen," said Gabriel. "They see everything! And yet they are thieves and robbers in their hearts." 

"Oh!" said Mab. "Shiny things."

"Rings and teaspoons," agreed Mrs. Bird. "Bottle-tops." She frowned, looking at the magpies, and then behind them, as if searching for the culprits. Then she gave a little nod to herself, her face brightening, as if the matter had been concluded.

"That was the blue-tits," said Peregrine. "I caught them red-handed this morning."

"That's why there was no cream for the coffee!" Oriole said.

"Surrounded by villains," said Gabriel cheerfully. His smile had seldom left his eyes all day, and he was holding Oriole's hand.

"Really, I don't know _what_ your father was thinking," Mrs. Bird said. " _Look out for the birds_ , indeed. If only he'd been a little more explicit." 

Perry coughed. "Ma," he said.

"Honestly! All he needed to say was, be sure to feed the birds! Or, the bird seed is in the study!" Mrs Bird's chin was up and her eyes sparkling. "I suppose he thought he was _terribly_ clever, killing two birds with one stone..."

"Mrs Bird?" said Gabriel gently.

"But, my dear," said Professor Bird, still in his walking clothes, and taking off the most disreputable of Trilbys as he fell into step with his wife."How right I was to trust in my excellent family!"


End file.
